How To Create a Profitable, Scalable Trend Signal in Crypto

Introduction

Crypto momentum works. This is how to implement a systematic signal across a broad crypto universe that scales. The backtest runs 147% over five years with a 13% max drawdown, rebalancing daily.

The signal uses four trend estimators combined via median, normalized through z-score and sigmoid mapping, weighted by inverse variance. It works because crypto momentum lives in the 5-20 day range, not the 6-12 month window you’d use for equities.